Roger Daltrey ‘Bored S—less’ With ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’

Consider the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” A timeless track, a revolutionary sentiment voiced with revolutionary music, the closing cut on a classic album (1971’s Who’s Next). That scream at the end.

“That’s the only song I’m bloody bored shitless with,” he revealed to Rolling Stone. “I don’t know why, but I’m being honest. All the others I can approach like I’m singing for the first time. I don’t know what’s happening there psychologically. Maybe it’s the song, but I never seem to be in the same pocket where I’m singing it for the first time.”

Daltrey expressed warmer feelings for some other Who tracks in the interview. He noted that while at the time he thought 1982’s It’s Hard was “overproduced,” he digs the martial-tempo track “Cry If You Want.” He also noted that he’s been playing “How Many Friends” and “Dreaming From the Waist,” from 1975’s The Who by Numbers, with his solo band, singling out “How Many Friends” as “a great song, especially in these days of antisocial media.”

However, he noted a front-to-back performance of the band’s classic 1967 quasi-concept record The Who Sell Outis not going to happen. Though he’s certain he could perform songs like “I Can See For Miles,” “Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand” and “Tattoo,” he balked when reminded the record also contains the track “Rael.”

“I could probably do most of it, but I don’t want to ever sing 'Rael' onstage," he revealed. "That was done in the studio. I think it was New York, but I don’t remember. It was all tape-looped and double-tracked on two tape recorders. Bouncing across it was layers after layers of vocals. Just trying to bloody reinvent that would be a nightmare.”

Daltrey will publish his memoir, Thanks a Lot, Mr. Kibblewight, in October. “It’s been kind of weird and a little like falling off a cliff and seeing your life go before your eyes,” he said of writing the book. “It can leave you a bit wishing you’d done more, but then equally when you look back at it all you think, ‘Fuck me. Didn’t I do a lot!’”